


you told me lies (I heard the truth)

by Imiaslavie



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: (in a roundabout but very gentle way), 5+1 Things, Developing Relationship, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, First Kiss, Flirting, Humor, M/M, RK is Richard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 23:05:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15496761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imiaslavie/pseuds/Imiaslavie
Summary: “I thought you were supposed to be smart.”‘Detective—’“Richard.” Gavin tears his eyes away from his phone before even reading the whole message the android has sent. “You drank human alcohol by mistake and damaged your vocal biocomponent. You don’t get a say in this.” Gavin thinks for a second, snorts. “Get it? A say.”Or five times Richard asked Gavin about the scar on his nose and one time he heard the answer.





	you told me lies (I heard the truth)

**Author's Note:**

> Or alternatively titled 'What's in a name?' *wink*
> 
> Huge thanks to my lovely beta writeordiebitch/xxwriter389xx (Tumblr/AO3) who got the draft that I've finished writing at 2AM (because that's when the inspiration strikes), saw the amount of absolutely idiotic typos and didn't run away. You are awesome <3
> 
> And as always, thanks to everyone who leaves kudos and comments on my works. Nothing beats waking up and seeing all the lovely words you write to me, guys <3 You keep me going.
> 
> Russian version here - https://ficbook.net/readfic/7202915

1.  
“Detective Reed, I was wondering… how did you get your scar?”

Gavin lifts his gaze up from the keyboard, blinks away the tension from his eyes. He’s been at this report for-fucking-ever and still has a lot of writing left.

RK stares at him, its face as impassive as ever, but there’s a slight tilt to its head, as if it’s really interested in hearing what Gavin has to say. Ha, _as if_. It’s just a trick the android learned to be seen as more human after several officers told it its stiffness was unnerving.

“What, can’t analyze it out of me?” Gavin says, reaching for the open pack of salt crackers lying on his desk.

RK’s LED flashes a saturated blue. “This… is not how my scanners work.”

Gavin bites into a cracker. Damn, these things are good. Gotta ask Chris where he bought them. “Tough shit then.”

RK purses his lips. Another fake thing about it. Jesus, we get it, you want to be a real boy. No one is buying it.

“I could just make a search about you on the Net.”

Gavin can’t help it — he laughs.

“Who the fuck you think I am, a celebrity? Kamski himself?” He pauses. “Wait, that’s a shitty example, the man is a recluse… _Anyway_. You won’t find anything about me. So live in darkness, shitty tin can.”

Gavin cleans his fingers with a wipe and focuses his attention on the report. Well. Tries to. Because throughout writing about the exact nature of lacerations he found on the victim last night, he keeps wondering about what made RK ask the question in the first place.

Thank fuck the android let it go.

 

2.  
If Gavin got a dollar each time someone complimented RK on his new uniform, he would be… Okay, not a millionaire, but he would have enough money to buy one of those favourite pastries of his that are sold across the street. They’re obscenely overpriced, but give him foodgasms each time.

The only one who hasn’t gushed over RK’s new look is Hank. Probably. Unless Connor made him say something. He totally could. Hank is eating out of his palm. Sometimes literally. Gross.

The new uniform _does_ look nice, though. The cut of the jacket is almost exactly the same sans for that stupid high double collar. Also the jacket doesn’t have any android-identifying thingies. Gavin would totally take a jab at that if not for the fact that RK still has his LED and — from what Gavin has gathered — has no intentions of removing it. As long as he isn’t really trying to trick anybody into thinking he’s flesh and bone — he’s fine. Ish.

“Detective Reed? Here are the files you requested.”

Speak of the devil. Gavin moves his legs down from the table to sit properly and takes the tablet from RK’s hands. Finally some good fucking work.

Gavin is on the third page already when he realizes that RK still hasn’t moved from the table and looms behind his shoulder.

“What? You want somethin’?”

If he expects Gavin to comment on his jacket, he’s totally lost some gears. Same if he’s expecting a proper _thank you_. Uh, or maybe Gavin should say it..? It’s not like it’s much work. Or will kill Gavin. On the other hand, it’s not like it would mean much to the plastic boy, so what’s the point?

“Detective, how did you get your scar?”

Gavin’s train of thought stops. What? Really? After almost a… what, a month? He is bringing this up again? Well. If he wants it _so_ bad.

“I fell from a tree rescuing a kitten,” Gavin says, looking RK right in the eyes with a deadpan expression. RK squints, his LED going yellow for a couple of swirls.

“This was a lie.”

Gavin raises an eyebrow. “You think I’m not the type to rescue kittens?”

RK tilts his head to the left. And it… doesn’t look as forced as weeks before. “I wouldn’t know. But I’ve read your body language and your heart rate. The changes were subtle, but I…” He pauses for a moment. “Presumed.” Another pause. “Also this was a perfect opportunity to laugh at my expense which I was sure you wouldn’t pass.”

Huh. That is a really spot-on analysis. It also sounds like conclusions any human could do, not a string of properly arranged data. But RK’s very much machine-like politeness still makes Gavin’s teeth grind. No, it’s even more of the… what’s the term… political correctness? When people pretend to answer without actually answering? If RK wants to integrate into a society that much, he should’ve started with correcting the shit he says, not with a new jacket. Cretin.

They hold each other gazes for a little longer until RK heaves a short sigh. Gavin is fast to interpret that as defeat. Not today, robo-boy, not today. He grins, makes an _off you go_ gesture with his hand and concentrates on the tablet in his hands.

“I actually think you are.”

Gavin looks up. RK looks back.

“Am what?”

“The type to rescue kittens.”

RK finally goes away.

Gavin is left speechless.

_What the fuck?_

 

3.  
The Cyberlife waiting room is just as unwelcoming and sterile as the ones in human hospitals.

“I thought you were supposed to be smart.”

_‘Detective Reed, I never thought I’d see a day when you would call me smart.’_

“You haven’t seen _anything_. I said _supposed to_. Don’t tell me you feel like a top of the line perfect prototype right now.”

_‘Detective—’_

“Richard.” Gavin tears his eyes away from his phone before even reading the whole message the android has sent. “You drank human alcohol by mistake and damaged your vocal biocomponent. You don’t get a say in this.” Gavin thinks for a second, snorts. “Get it? _A say_.”

Richard has the audacity to look offended. Serves him right, plastic piece of idiot. Thanks to him, today was like college all over again: freshmen attending their first parties and then puking their guts out in the bushes and waking up the next day to find out a video of them making out with someone inappropriate has gone viral over the campus. Same here. Sorta.

When the guys at their little gathering in the precinct learned that RK series' androids are able to consume small doses of liquids, they immediately offered both of them a sip of beer. Connor did just fine. Richard? Not so much. The idiot mixed up the glasses and accidentally downed almost two fingers of whiskey. What cracked and crumbled in the universe that made a fucking android _forget_ that he isn’t supposed to drink — well, that’s a mystery that would never get solved. Gavin is not so naïve as to believe that he and the stories he fed Richard about his previous cases were the reason. Although that would be… nice. Very nice. Almost as nice as that laugh Richard gave at Gavin’s joke during one of the stories. A short laugh, but… Fuck, it was cute. Kitten sneeze levels of cute. And Gavin is a man enough to admit when something is cute. Even if the term applies to whatever fucking amount of pounds of plastic and metal and who knows the fuck else the android is made of.

There’s a light touch on Gavin’s knee. He puts the phone down on the bench and looks at Richard. The android lifts up his hand and lightly scratches across the middle of his nose.

 _‘How did you get your scar?’_ he mouths as if Gavin needs extra fucking clarification.

Gavin suppresses a smile, looking down at his feet. He knows that Richard’s scanners are down now, something the technicians asked him to do in order to prepare his systems or whatever. Best not to lay it too thick, though. “It was about five years ago,” he starts. “I got promoted to the Detective, me and the guys went to a bar to celebrate. Got smashed re-eal good. And there was this guy who got a little angry ‘cause of… Eh, I don’t remember. So. I kinda got a little angry too. Wanted to use my fists, you know? Got a good swing on the guy. For no reason at all. He swung back at me. And Tina, she’s a smart girl. Took me by the collar like a sodding dog and just bam! Got me out of the guy’s way. Almost. Brushed my nose with his ring, the fucker. Could’ve been worse, I guess. So Tina is rad and I have this thing,” he points at his scar, “that I look at every morning. It reminds me that I need to control myself more and never, ever go out for heavy drinking without Tina Chen.”

There. The fucker better eat it and never ask about the scar again. Anyway, why wouldn’t he? There isn’t a person in the world that wouldn’t believe in that. Gavin Reed got into the bar fight. The sky is blue. What else is new, what else is obvious. It’s probably what everyone thinks anyway. What’s one more person?

Even if that person is someone Gavin wishes thought better of him.

Ugh, whatever. Gavin tells himself to stop this pity party and un-glues his gaze from the dirt on his shoes. What face Richard has on, he wonders and turns his head to l—

Gavin’s breath hitches for a second.

It’s… he’s never seen such a complex emotion on Richard’s face before. It’s like he is… sad, but also… a little bit… amused? No, wrong, more like he… Pities— No. No. Gavin doesn’t understand it. Can’t name it. But it makes him wanna hide. Because it’s almost like — for whatever fucking reason — Richard is _touched_ , like he feels something tender when looking at Gavin. And it doesn’t make any fucking sense.

Gavin prays to all the gods in the universe for something to interrupt this moment.

“RK 900 Richard?” the technician calls out from the door. Oh, _thank fuck_. “Please come in.”

Richard stands up. Then he picks up the phone and puts it in Gavin’s hand, nodding at the screen. Gavin gulps. Looks at it.

_‘This was a lie, Detective.’_

What the… “Your scanners aren’t supposed to be working!”

Three dots of the message being typed taunt him. Richard’s smile taunts him. Gavin wants to jump out of the window. Except there are no windows.

The phone beeps.

_‘I know you. I don’t need scanners to know when you’re lying anymore.’_

Then he finally leaves to follow the technician.

Gavin hides his face in his palms.

_Fuck._

 

4.  
Gavin’s seen a lot of fucked up crime scenes in his life. But this one — this one takes the cake. The five-tier, marzipan flowers and tons of whipped cream and little chocolate figurines and a naked-stripper-inside kind of cake.

The room is covered in blood completely, red and blue alike. It’s fresh. The streaks of it are deliberate. And it’s not the severed limbs strewn across the room that make Gavin feel sick. It’s not the fact that some of them belong to a child. Not even the fact that it has happened less than half an hour ago and the psycho who did this might be near. No.

It’s the sense of _fun_ that prevails in the room.

Gavin sees it as clear as day, the joy the killer had when doing all of it, when painting arcs of blood with his hands on the walls, when arranging what’s left of the bodies into ridiculous poses.

It’s the scent of decayed flowers, their petals brown and wet, lying in every corner of the room.

Richard led him away to the roof to take a breather. They sit on the low wooden chairs propped against a wall, Gavin smoking his second cigarette. He doesn’t smoke, not really, not since college days, but he needs to expel the air he breathed in in that room from his lungs. Also he hopes it will help him relax. It doesn’t.

“We’ll have to go back there,” Richard says quietly.

“Yup.”

“You’re still not feeling well.”

“Yup.”

The second cigarette comes to an end. Gavin squishes it against the wall, casts his gaze around, looking for something to use as a trash can, maybe a tin or something.

“What do you do when you want to relax?” Richard asks, picking up an overfilled tin can with an image of a fish on its side.

Gavin shoves the cigarette butts in there, leans back on the chair, sighs. He closes his eyes, the sunset holding no appeal to him. “I… listen to songs. Slow ones. In languages I don’t know. That way I don’t have to think.”

And Gavin really, _really_ needs not to think right now. At least for a while. At least until he’ll have to take the stairs down and enter the room again, until he will have to—

French. Quiet and tentative, almost shy. Richard’s voice is hoarser than usual. At first, there’s little to no melody, but with each line of the… of the _song_ , Richard _sings_ — the rhythm takes form, becomes gentler, and words slot seamlessly into each other because Richard doesn’t have to take breaths.

Gavin’s fingers curl into fists. It’s not relaxing, it makes his heart hurt. But it’s the ache he would take over anything else in the world. Like this — he can pretend that nothing exists but the two of them. It’s a scary thought, a scary wish. But he is weak. He can’t stop wishing.

When the song comes to an end, Richard breathes out a weak, “Gavin.”

And Gavin shudders. And he says, “Keep singing.” And then: “Please.”

And Richard does.

 

5.  
The stones are hard under Gavin’s knees. His legs ache from running, his shoes are full of cold water and the bullet scrape on his neck burns.

His hands are colored blue.

Richard’s head on his lap feels too heavy.

“Medics are coming, you hear me?” Gavin says in an angry half-whisper. “Or whatever they’re called for you guys. They’re coming. Don’t fall asleep. Or… shit, maybe it would be better to shut down? Would it preserve the power? Fuck, Rich, why are you so complicated..!”

The corner or Richard’s mouth quirks. His lashes look really long from this angle. “If you k-k-keep rambling nonsense, I promise not to fa-a-all asleep.”

Gavin cradles Richard’s head in his hands tighter, tries to cover as much of the wound under the chin as possible. He tries not to pay attention to the missing right arm, to the right leg ripped off further than the knee.

“I don’t ramble, ever, you di—”

“How are your wou-ou-ounds? Are you in much pain?”

How are… He even dares to ask, fucking asshole, lying here, missing half of his limbs, his neck and chest cut open with a rusty knife, blood slowly trickling on the ground?

“Sure am. Your idiotic questions give me a massive headache.” Gavin greets his teeth, looks around, further down the narrow alleyway, tries to hear the siren of the ambulance. “Come on, come on, where the fuck are they?!”

“Gavin.” The electronic notes in Richard’s voice are so strong that it barely sounds human. “Where did you get your scar?”

At that, Gavin finally sobs. He hates him. He hates him _so much_.

“My father,” he blurts out. “He was a drinker. And a fiend. And one night he goes off crazier than usual. Mommy gets the kitchen knife to defend herself. He doesn’t like that. Not one bit. So me, watchi—”

The strange artificial noise that shuts Gavin up is actually Richard’s laugh.

“Gavin. This is a quote from that favourite movi-vi-e of yours. Please. Won’t you ever tell me-e-e the real sto-o-ory?”

“I will.” Gavin brushes the wet strand of hair from Richard’s forehead. “Of course I will. After you pull through this, okay?”

Gavin sees that Richard tries to smile, but his lips just don’t obey. It’s only Richard’s eyes that squint slightly, an echo of a smile, kind and warm.

“This will be my reward?”

“Yeah. Just… get through this.”

A huge gush of blood washes over Gavin’s fingers. Trickles from between the lips in thin bright-blue stripes. Shit, fuck, fuck, fuck—

“What if I want… what if I want something e-e-else? As a reward?”

Something else? What possibly—

“Will you kiss me, Gavin?”

A siren howls in the distance, closing in.

Blood keeps flowing.

“I will. Okay? I will kiss you. And I will tell you. Just—”

Pull through.

Richard’s eyes slowly fall shut.

Gavin’s eyes burn.

Sirens scream.

_Pull through._

 

\+ 1.  
The biggest hoodie Gavin owns still looks a bit too small on Richard. But it is what it is. It’s not like he could have swung by the android’s apartment to grab something of his. Gavin’s’ll make do.

Richard connects with the medic-slash-technician-slash-whatever girl — Gavin can tell it from the way both of their LEDs blink — probably to sign his discharge. She nods, wishes them both luck and leaves the two of them alone.

They look at each other, and for some reason it feels like they’re meeting for the first time. And it’s a nice do-over of their actual first meeting. It didn’t go well, all those months ago. And this… _this_ is nice.

Richard parts his lips, words ready at the tip of his tongue. Gavin is faster.

“I woke up at three AM wanting nachos, tripped over my cat and nosedived right into the nightstand. Literally.”

There. _There_. And Rich— Of course he laughs, of course. Who wouldn’t.

But it’s warm. It’s bright. It’s _loving_. It’s _I knew it would be something like that and not any of those horrible things you’ve tried to sell me_.

And then Richard kisses him without any warning.

It’s just a quick brush of lips, but it sends a thrill down Gavin’s spine, makes something warm coil in his throat and chest. A reward indeed. Almost makes him forget about the lecture about the self-sacrificing he has prepared for his android dumbass. Almost.

Richard’s tongue flicks against Gavin’s lips.

Okay, change of plans.

They’ll kiss until the staff kicks them out for inappropriate behavior.

The lecture can come later.

**Author's Note:**

> I had LOTS of fun writing this. Lots. It was very relaxing, working with this flippant, quick-witted version of Gavin. Also it made for a nice change from writing Connor's POV for my other work. Connor is lovely, his long inner monologues are lovely, but this work and this Gavin were a nice change of pace. Also, as stated, written at 2 am, all in one go.
> 
> And yes, this is my version of reed900. Uh, a glossed over, barely explored version. Just wanted to have some fun with them. But maybe I'll write something more serious later??
> 
> How did I come up with this idea, you might ask, kind sirs? Well. I'm an indecisive idiot. I couldn't choose the actual story behind Gavin's scar and made a list. And then I was like, 'What if other people tried to guess?'. And then I came up with the 'Gavin tries to sell Joker's monologue as a real story' thing, choked from laughter and decided to write this story no matter what.
> 
> Also it has three references (besides the Joker one) with VERY different levels of popularity and, uh, obviousness. Just sayin'.
> 
> Also, my Connor and Gavin fic is looking very nice already. The first chapter is written, the second is started, the third is planned. Yay!
> 
> BUT. Before that one I have another Hankcon one planned. And boy. Here be angst. It will be BAD. I'm thrilled to write it.
> 
> Love ya all!!


End file.
